Secret weapon
Before COVID, I’d reluctantly joined a gym. Twice a week, I’d have a workout with a trainer, followed by a sauna session — to sweat just that bit more. One day, I felt overwhelmed by a couple of complex work tasks, and my fingers had reached for my phone, to message my trainer that I was cancelling that day’s session.
But, some greater force intervened and I took my finger away and thought, “I’ll go, but I’ll multi-task - I’ll do some work in the sauna”.
I’d often taken books into the sauna with me (it’s infrared, so no steam) but this was the first time I’d taken paper and a pen. And, something strange happened: the ideas just flowed and the conceptual dilemma I’d had for days suddenly resolved itself.
I sketched a process visual, my designer mocked it up that night, and I gave it to my client the next day. “This is brilliant”, she said. “How did you come up with this?”
I didn’t tell her, but I did it again the next week, just to see if it worked a second time. It did. And a third, and a fourth.
So, fast forward to last year when my office was due for a redesign. Of course, I specified a sauna in the bathroom. It’s now where a lot of my best thinking is done — I even line up the thorniest conceptual problems to solve in the sauna.
I have related this to numerous clients and I’m intrigued by where others say they do their best work.
Here are some I’ve discussed recently: one CEO thinks best in the bath, another while weeding or watering her garden, one while riding his bike to and from work (vigorously), one sitting at a cafe drinking successive lattes, and still another lies on her sofa, having kicked her shoes off and locked her door so colleagues think she’s gone out.
Nobody, I repeat, nobody, has said, “At my desk” or “In front of my computer”.
Question: How do you deliberately set up the right conditions to do your best reflective work?
Shorthand
Have you heard of an ‘ick’? In case you haven’t, it’s a marvellous piece of shorthand that describes a flip from initial attraction to revulsion.
In a relationship, it might be discovering that your object of attraction doesn’t use pillowcases or sheets (a true one that a friend related), or brushes their teeth while sitting on the toilet. From its inception in an episode of Sex and the City some 20 years ago, an ‘ick’ has become meme-worthy in its own right.
The point is that a single, very short word, can signify so much.
One of my clients uses the shorthand term ‘molasses’ to describe any of the myriad factors that gum up their basic organisational processes. Recruitment takes forever, travel permissions require four signatures, procurement and contracting is byzantine.
The value of such shorthand is that it enables large groups of people to signal a complex social idea in just a word. The best of these (like ‘ick’ and ‘molasses’) do more than just channel complaints; they open up conversations between people who have had different experiences, but want to find common ground.
Question: What useful shorthand terms do you use (or need) in your organisation?
Every billionaire is a policy failure
I’m not an outdoorsman at all, so when my son Jasper and I prepared for our trip to snowy New Zealand this past July, we had to borrow and buy pretty much everything.
One place I befriended was my local Patagonia outlet, where I was surprised to discover that they discourage purchases. The staff actively talked me OUT of buying more things than I needed and then patiently explained that EVERY item can be brought back for repair, free of charge, for its entire lifetime.
This minimalist philosophy is the ethos of Patagonia’s founder, Yvon Chouinard, who in 2022 sent shock waves through the business world by just giving his company away. The New York Times reported that all of Chouinard’s $3 billion net worth is now placed in a trust that contributes to climate stability.
At 83, he has been for over 50 years the former rock climber turned ‘reluctant businessman’ and his 40-something children don’t want the money either. Chouinard himself drives a rattly old Subaru, wears raggy shirts, and doesn’t own a computer or mobile phone. His wife Malinda, and children, Fletcher and Claire, hold the view that such concentration of wealth is undesirable, and indeed can be seen as a societal failure.
What I find fascinating about this story is how it shows that wealth is nearly always a proxy for success. Even some of my clients, even though they’re non-profits, have a focus on growth measured by top-line revenue. In my strategy work, I talk them out of treating this metric with more reverence than it deserves, but we have to then begin the hard work of working out what matters more than dollars.
Question: What does success really look like in your organisation?
I’m on holidays until next week so the above are a ‘summer edition’ of past 5 Minute Strategic Mindset segments that have been popular with readers. I look forward to being back with you shortly, however, if you’ve enjoyed reading, please click the ‘heart’ so it keeps the 5MSM pulse beating.
See you next Friday morning,
Andrew
The Patagonia Billionaire post was fascinating, and your comment "wealth is nearly always a proxy for success" got me thinking. A proxy is simply a stand-in: it represents the original, and may even have many of the powers of the original, but of course it's not the real thing itself. We should always measure success as ''achievement of objective" (or goal/plan/purpose/mission). The challenge, as you astutely observe, is to select the most relevant metric(s) to assess our success (achievements). For example, is "number of customers" a more important metric than "revenue"? Where does "customer satisfaction" sit? What about "staff satisfaction"?
Andrew, I've loved this year's Summer Edition. Thanks again for the crystallised stimulus!
Thought provoking and original as always